It's often said in the digital world that "content is king." It is clear that in journalism, good stories (even at considerable lengths) still rule, whether in books, newspapers, magazine, web-based publications, podcasts, or on innovative digital narrative platforms.

Why are America's diplomats not speaking out loudly and clearly on Khadija Ismayilova's behalf? Why has the State Department not joined Europe's diplomats in publicly demanding her immediate release from jail?

We might ask whether media matters when it comes to bringing clarity and light to complex issues of building social justice in society. Does it help? Or hurt? Do sensational stories elicit solutions that work?

Friends and acquaintances across the Middle East/North Africa region often ask for advice on matters related to journalism, media in general, ethics, and how to prepare young people for this very exciting and ever-changing field.

Don't get me wrong; balance is not without its merits. Some point-and-counterpoint is fine. Balance is not, however, the same as objectivity or accuracy -- although it makes a nice, easy, inexpensive stand-in for what might otherwise be a real, difficult, comparatively expensive attempt to report what is actually going on.

With fewer journalists and a punishing real-time news cycle, news is increasingly composed of information that is easy, fast and inexpensive to get -- like coverage of crime and trials, opinion, celebrity, and syndicated stories.

We are honoring Shane Bauer and others because their work takes these issues beyond the sensational stories on which the public and our policy makers too often fixate. When fear drives policy, the resulting initiatives do not support public safety or rehabilitation.

When Musab Shawabkeh investigated the growing abuse of Jordan's medical tourism business he had to dress up as a taxi driver and visit local clinics and hospitals with a hidden camera offering patients and finding out how much he could get in commissions.

Evidence is a powerful way to challenge deeply inhumane wrongdoing. But it also raises the question: What happens when evidence is hard to come by in individual acts of violence, like rapes and sexual assaults?

Anas' extraordinary work has me thinking about a debate in America that has acquired new meaning since Glenn Greenwald and others first started reporting in June on the NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Is "advocacy" journalism really journalism?

In my TEDTalk, I tell the full story of how it all started. I look back on over 14 years of my undercover reporting. There have been high and low points, but one thing that remains is the kind of impact this kind of journalism brings.

Ironically, a number of elite journalists have emerged as among Snowden's harshest detractors and of the brand of investigative journalism practiced, for example, by Glenn Greenwald. But this week Jeffrey Toobin appeared to be positioning himself as the leader of that particular pack.